A translucent white handkerchief with black embroidery on it. Written on it is 'I gave up drinking and came to be what seemed to be a description of reality', with an embroidered hand drawing of an ashtray full of stubbed out cigarettes beneath it.

I Hold This Truth, 2023

Embroidery on Vintage Handkerchief

In All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (1), Adam Curtis says (with regards to the Odon Brothers’ invention of the Ecosystem, which was later discredited) – “It stopped being a metaphor and came to be, what seemed to be, a scientific description of reality.”

That phrase seems to perfectly encapsulates how so much that underpins cultural norms is unmoored from its ideological underpinning so as to simply be a self-evident truth.

This piece plays with that naturalisation around the theme of authenticity. What does it mean to be more authentically yourself when sober than when you are drunk?



1 Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Episode 2 - The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts, BBC2, 2011.